July 12, 2013

The Eccentricity of Hope: a review of Graham Parke's "No Hope for Gomez!"

Would you ever sign up to be a guinea pig
for a pharmaceutical company? I sure as heck wouldn't. I'm skeptical
enough of the drugs that have already been clinically approved.
Granted, it is easy money--provided your appendages don't start
falling off or your skin doesn't turn to sandpaper. For Gomez Porter,
money is a big motivating factor when he signs on to sign on as a
test subject with a drug company. The antique shop he inherited from
his parents isn't exactly a booming business, and Gomez's
salesmanship pales even against his socially awkward and slightly
neurotic assistant, Hicks.

In fact, Gomez's quiet little life
already seems to be filled with enough crazy, but maybe that's the
drugs talking, since the novel is told by Gomez himself through his
blog entries. It's difficult to say for sure how real things are that
Gomez is writing about. Is that guy browsing the shelves of his store
really wearing a sombrero? Is the guy even there or just a
drug-fueled hallucination? The take-it-as-it-comes attitude exhibited
by Gomez makes it hard to say for sure.

Then there are the mysteries that crop up
while Gomez is recording his most banal thoughts and experiences. A
fellow test subject is dead, and Gomez can't help wondering if it has
something to do with the drug he was taking, or maybe something even
more nefarious. Plus, Gomez develops a crush on the doctor checking
up on him regularly through the trial, unsure if he's feeling genuine
emotions towards her or if it's all due to the unknown drug he's
taking. Either way, when she confides to him that someone is stalking
her, he's all too eager to stalk her stalker.

The "is it all in his mind"
schtick is played out really well, but on the other side of that coin
is a lot of mundanity catalogued in Gomez's journal entries. Parke
mercifully peppers it with plenty of wry humor and waggish remarks to
offset what might otherwise be utter mundanity. Unfortunately, it
takes quite a while for the pacing to match the puns, making the
first half of the book more of a slog to get through than I was
expecting. And as the story progresses, the blog entry style seems to
conflict with how the story is being told, kind of constricting how
things play out. There were points where I wonder if Parke might have
been better off just writing the novel from a more conventional
first-person viewpoint. That said, when the plot gets into gear and
Gomez's tribulations mount, everything blends together, or I just got
used to the odd universe Parke constructed through Gomez's
point-of-view. It's definitely quirky, a bit of High Fidelity if
written while on acid. If that sounds like your cup of tea, give it
go, if not you might spend more time scratching your head than
turning the page.